Art Exhibit: Beyond What I See by Elizabeth Windett

Beyond What I See opens Thursday, October 13 at the Drummond Public Library

The first formal exhibition of intensely mystical images drawn by artist Elizabeth Windett begins with an opening celebration Thursday, October 13 from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Drummond Public Library. Beyond What I See is an installation of over 30 realistic and abstract works in graphite, charcoal, colored pen and pencil.

On display Oct 13, 2016 through January 5 , 2017

The Drummond Public Library is hosting the first formal exhibition of the very intensely mystical images drawn by artist Elizabeth Windett beginning with an opening celebration Thursday, October 13 from 4 to 6 p.m. Beyond What I see is an installation of over 30 works in graphite, charcoal, colored pen and pencil. Windett brings into sharp focus the complex and sometime contradictory emotions she sees in the photo images or from abstract reflections she has selected to draw. These are not simple sketches, but rather studies that make seductive visual statements.

Artist Windett will explain the sharp and critical focus and process she brings to each of her drawings during the presentation at 4:30 p.m. on October 13.

Windett was born 28 years ago in Rockford, IL, then grew up in southeast Wisconsin. She has been drawing since she was 3 or 4, but did not begin to realize she had a special talent for graphite & charcoal portraits until high school age. She was drawn into a photo of Kurt Cobain that was printed in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to commemorate the ten-year anniversary of his death, She studied the photo of the rock legend and created her own image from it. The drawing was very successful. Since then, her focus has been to draw black and white images.. She moved to Ashland, Wisconsin to attend Northland College ten years ago. Her intention was to study mathematics and astrophysics. Halfway through college, she changed her direction 360 degrees and majored in eastern religious studies with a philosophy minor.

Liz Windett’s approach to new encounters of both the feelings within herself and experiences in the external world is a much more intense and deliberate method than most of us follow. She carefully studies the new event. Windett explained that she suspects that this very conscious study enhances her ability to mimic, through drawing, what she perceives in a photo or during her own meditation. She chooses to reproduce images from a photo that arrest her interest through sheer beauty or maybe peculiar composition. Liz has expanded her artistic voice using micron pens, markers, and watercolor pencils in abstract work that draws from her mindful reflections during meditation.

In order to describe her sense of purpose while drawing from a photo or meditative reflection, Windett offered an example to help clarify the depth of intent when she studies a new experience:Liz reported,” I have hand-transcribed the Bhagavad Gita 14 times and counting; I do this because the text and its true meaning are so sublimely subtle and beyond comprehension, that the way I feel I can most closely taste it (without meditating, of course!) is through the act of reproducing it with my own hands. I rewrite a text that has already been written and I draw images already captured by a photographer. In the process, I become totally engulfed by what captures my attention. It is my goal to bring the viewer into this same realm where I operate all day, humbled and stupefied by the beauty that saturates every single moment from birth to death. “

“It is my own loneliness here in this overwhelming state which compels me to create art and to draw others into this awareness with me,” said Windett. “ I’m excited and open myself up to a very vulnerable state while displaying my art publicly. What’s most important to me is to share my perception of the world; it is my own religion.”

Visit the Drummond Public Library to view this exhibition of powerful and dramatic images that demand our attention on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday 10 to 5 p.m. and Thursdays till 6p.m.; Saturday 9 to 1p.m. The exhibit will be on display through January 5.